O CHILDREN GROW UP WELL

it’s not often that i start liking new music right away, but when i found myself in front of new goth band o children during last summer’s bucharest live show, i made a mental note to check them out.

they came back a few weeks ago, so i took the opportunity to find out more about them.

tell me a bit about how o children came to be.

tobi and andi were in a band together called bono must die, which was starting to get really big with the whole nu rave thing. unfortunately bono’s people threatened to sue them because of the name, which they then had to change. by the time all that happened, it felt like it was all dying down and tobi wanted to change direction. he’d met harry through partying in london and gauthier had just arrived to the uk from france with the hope of finding a band to play guitar in, and got linked to tobi through friends in common.

how’s touring treating you?
touring has been absolutely awesome so far. pretty much everything including the shows, the people, the partying and just the overall trawling around europe has been amazing. we’re almost done for the year now, but we’re looking forward to another set of shows around mainly germany and italy in the new year. we honestly can’t wait.

tell me about your new album, apnea.
our new album is somewhat of a change of direction from the first one. here, tobi and gauthier shared writing duties, and tobi produced it so i think we can also say it’s a very personal record. as you might have read, tobi was going through a bit of a hard time with his visa issues (which are now solved) and that reflected in the album, but in a surprising way, as the songs have more of a joyous and hopeful feel to them than you’d expect.

what are you plans for the future?
for now we’re just touring about and enjoying it, but album 3 is already in the making, and once we settle down again it’ll become our main focus.

any dream collaboration? (nick cave perhaps? )
we have several heroes between us, nick cave is probably one of them, but there are other people like josh homme or anton newcombe which would be mental to work with.

i saw you last summer in bucharest, at ctrl day out 2. how was the romanian audience?
to be honest, we all remember that as being our favourite gig ever. and i’m not just saying that because you’re from there. it was our first gig outside of the uk, it was everything we hoped it would be and more, our minds were blown. our second show in bucharest was also fantastic and we had a great time.